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The Queendom of Sol #4
To Crush the Moon
In the conclusion to this epic interstellar adventure by Nebula Award nominee Wil McCarthy, humanity stands at a crossroads as the heroes who fashioned a man-made heaven must rescue their descendants from eternal damnation….
TO CRUSH THE MOON
Once the Queendom of Sol was a glowing monument to humankind’s loftiest dreams. Ageless and immortal, its citizens lived in peaceful splendor. But as Sol buckled under the swell of an immorbid population, space itself literally ran out….
Conrad Mursk has returned to Sol on the crippled starship Newhope. His crew are the frozen refugees of a failed colony known as Barnard’s Star. A thousand years older, Mursk finds Sol on the brink of rebellion, while a fanatic necro cult is reviving death itself. Now Mursk and his lover, Captain Xiomara “Xmary” Li Weng, are sent on a final, desperate mission by King Bruno de Towaji–one of the greatest terraformers of the ages–to literally crush the moon. If they succeed, they’ll save
billions of lost souls. If they fail, they’ll strand humanity between death–and something unimaginably worse….
From the Paperback edition.
TO CRUSH THE MOON
Once the Queendom of Sol was a glowing monument to humankind’s loftiest dreams. Ageless and immortal, its citizens lived in peaceful splendor. But as Sol buckled under the swell of an immorbid population, space itself literally ran out….
Conrad Mursk has returned to Sol on the crippled starship Newhope. His crew are the frozen refugees of a failed colony known as Barnard’s Star. A thousand years older, Mursk finds Sol on the brink of rebellion, while a fanatic necro cult is reviving death itself. Now Mursk and his lover, Captain Xiomara “Xmary” Li Weng, are sent on a final, desperate mission by King Bruno de Towaji–one of the greatest terraformers of the ages–to literally crush the moon. If they succeed, they’ll save
billions of lost souls. If they fail, they’ll strand humanity between death–and something unimaginably worse….
From the Paperback edition.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
5 people are currently reading
265 people want to read
About the author
Wil McCarthy
57 books87 followersScience fiction author and Chief Technology Officer for Galileo Shipyards
Engineer/Novelist/Journalist/Entrepreneur Wil McCarthy is a former contributing editor for WIRED magazine and science columnist for the SyFy channel (previously SciFi channel), where his popular "Lab Notes" column ran from 1999 through 2009. A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, AnLab, Colorado Book, Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick awards, and contributed to projects that won a Webbie, an Eppie, a Game Developers' Choice Award, and a General Excellence National Magazine Award. In addition, his imaginary world of "P2", from the novel LOST IN TRANSMISSION, was rated one of the 10 best science fiction planets of all time by Discover magazine. His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog, Asimov's, WIRED, and SF Age, and his novels include the New York Times Notable BLOOM, Amazon.com "Best of Y2K" THE COLLAPSIUM (a national bestseller) and, most recently, TO CRUSH THE MOON. He has also written for TV, appeared on The History Channel and The Science Channel, and published nonfiction in half a dozen magazines, including WIRED, Discover, GQ, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum, and the Journal of Applied Polymer Science. Previously a flight controller for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics, McCarthy is now the president and Chief Technology Officer of RavenBrick LLC in Denver, CO, a developer of smart window technologies. He lives in Colorado with his family
Engineer/Novelist/Journalist/Entrepreneur Wil McCarthy is a former contributing editor for WIRED magazine and science columnist for the SyFy channel (previously SciFi channel), where his popular "Lab Notes" column ran from 1999 through 2009. A lifetime member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, Seiun, AnLab, Colorado Book, Theodore Sturgeon and Philip K. Dick awards, and contributed to projects that won a Webbie, an Eppie, a Game Developers' Choice Award, and a General Excellence National Magazine Award. In addition, his imaginary world of "P2", from the novel LOST IN TRANSMISSION, was rated one of the 10 best science fiction planets of all time by Discover magazine. His short fiction has graced the pages of magazines like Analog, Asimov's, WIRED, and SF Age, and his novels include the New York Times Notable BLOOM, Amazon.com "Best of Y2K" THE COLLAPSIUM (a national bestseller) and, most recently, TO CRUSH THE MOON. He has also written for TV, appeared on The History Channel and The Science Channel, and published nonfiction in half a dozen magazines, including WIRED, Discover, GQ, Popular Mechanics, IEEE Spectrum, and the Journal of Applied Polymer Science. Previously a flight controller for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics, McCarthy is now the president and Chief Technology Officer of RavenBrick LLC in Denver, CO, a developer of smart window technologies. He lives in Colorado with his family
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 10, 2021
Sad, elegaic, almost heartbreaking end to the Queendom of Sol
McCarthy kicks out all the props from under his magnificent, glittering Queendom of Sol, and it falls like, well, a megaton of brickmail. Not a pretty sight. I suppose the author intends this as a cautionary tale. The series is structured as a classical tragedy: the sad consequences of human hubris. ...
My 2006 review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
If you've missed the series, by all means start with vol. 1, The Collapsium.
McCarthy kicks out all the props from under his magnificent, glittering Queendom of Sol, and it falls like, well, a megaton of brickmail. Not a pretty sight. I suppose the author intends this as a cautionary tale. The series is structured as a classical tragedy: the sad consequences of human hubris. ...
My 2006 review: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
If you've missed the series, by all means start with vol. 1, The Collapsium.
April 26, 2019
The king is dead. Long live the king.
I don't know what to say about this. This was a very, very good end-cap to the series. I am sad that it's over. Very sad, actually, because this is some of the finest science fiction I've ever read. The protagonist is the closest thing I've ever seen in literature to someone incredibly intelligent who also suffered what appeared to be symptoms of ASD. I felt seen. And having the hero be someone other than the swashbuckling charmer, be the awkward problem solver.. I felt seen. That's really it. I would love to read more of this author's work. It is on the same level of creativity and working through the logical implications of things as The Culture series.
I don't know what to say about this. This was a very, very good end-cap to the series. I am sad that it's over. Very sad, actually, because this is some of the finest science fiction I've ever read. The protagonist is the closest thing I've ever seen in literature to someone incredibly intelligent who also suffered what appeared to be symptoms of ASD. I felt seen. And having the hero be someone other than the swashbuckling charmer, be the awkward problem solver.. I felt seen. That's really it. I would love to read more of this author's work. It is on the same level of creativity and working through the logical implications of things as The Culture series.
September 1, 2025
Took me a while to finish this. Final book in this tetralogy. Story takes a very different turn (that's what makes these books great, their different styles), but it's mostly a road trip and not a particularly exciting one. The deus ex machina ending felt a bit sudden. But: a hopeful message for humanity. Thus ends the Queendom of Sol.
April 17, 2019
Love this book. It shows the consequences of decisions. And that even showing mercy to your enemy can kick you in the butt in the longterm.
May 3, 2011
To Crush the Moon is part 4 of Wil McCarthy's Queendom of Sol series. The first three novels in the series are: The Collapsium, The Wellstone, and Lost in Transmission. If you haven't read any of these, I would strongly recommend you'd stop reading this review right now, and pick the first novels. Myself, I read Lost in Transmission first, and fell in love with the wonderful mix of character development and hard SF that Wil McCarthy provides.
That being said, is To Crush the Moon as good as Lost in Transmission? I'm afraid it's not. It's certainly a great novel for many reasons, but I found only traces in To Crush the Moon of what made Lost in Transmission so magical to me. Lost in Transmission was self-contained, and focused on characters trying to survive, and coming to odds over differences in philosophy. It was a beautiful novel because it didn't have any enemies, nor the need to set clear goals for its immortal characters.
To Crush the Moon picks up after Conrad Mursk returns from the doomed colony of King Bascal's Sorrow, and takes the reader from the last glory days of the Queendom of Sol, to the dystopian, distant future where we've previously seen King Bruno and Conrad battle armies of robots. This setting is hardly a spoiler, as it has been hinted at ever since The Collapsium, in the opening and closing chapters. How it happens is interesting and consistent with the themes that McCarthy has establish ever since The Collapsium, but I couldn't help but feel it was a bit rushed. The Fall of the Queendom of Sol is, alas, not so grandiose.
What makes the novel a worthy entry in McCarthy's bibliography, however - albeit not a superior entry than Lost in Transmission - is what happens next. McCarthy essentially takes a hard SF world, which he has built carefully over four novels, and pushes his science to such an extreme that he builds a fantasy world out of it. "Any sufficiently advanced science" indeed.
And McCarthy takes great pleasure in this: a solid half of the novel is spent taking naive observers through the ruins of the Queendom of Sol, as they witness technology so advanced they take their creators for gods. It's incredibly amusing, then, when said gods are self-effacing Conrad Mursk and withdrawn ex-King Bruno. There are many scenes in To Crush the Moon that seem to exist mostly to poke fun at fantasy conventions, as Bruno and Conrad seem to be winking in aparté at the reader over how other men marvel at the "magic" they witness.
That's very interesting for a while, but it's unfortunate that McCarthy doesn't really take the concept for a spin. The rest of the novel plays out as a traditional fantasy novel with plausible SF explanations, but with all the trappings of the genre. The main characters actually spend a long time just Travelling All Over The Map And Marvelling At The World, which gets tedious here as it does in any fantasy novel.
Ultimately, the end of the novel, and thus of the Queendom of Sol series, is bittersweet, and somewhat underwhelming. I wish more time had been spent on the fates of Bascal, Xmary and Tamra, instead of spoofing a fantasy quest. Alas, fans of King Bascal, such as myself, will have to go back to Lost in Transmission to enjoy him again.
All in all, To Crush the Moon is an excellent, witty hard SF novel; I just wish it wasn't the conclusion to such a beloved series of mine.
That being said, is To Crush the Moon as good as Lost in Transmission? I'm afraid it's not. It's certainly a great novel for many reasons, but I found only traces in To Crush the Moon of what made Lost in Transmission so magical to me. Lost in Transmission was self-contained, and focused on characters trying to survive, and coming to odds over differences in philosophy. It was a beautiful novel because it didn't have any enemies, nor the need to set clear goals for its immortal characters.
To Crush the Moon picks up after Conrad Mursk returns from the doomed colony of King Bascal's Sorrow, and takes the reader from the last glory days of the Queendom of Sol, to the dystopian, distant future where we've previously seen King Bruno and Conrad battle armies of robots. This setting is hardly a spoiler, as it has been hinted at ever since The Collapsium, in the opening and closing chapters. How it happens is interesting and consistent with the themes that McCarthy has establish ever since The Collapsium, but I couldn't help but feel it was a bit rushed. The Fall of the Queendom of Sol is, alas, not so grandiose.
What makes the novel a worthy entry in McCarthy's bibliography, however - albeit not a superior entry than Lost in Transmission - is what happens next. McCarthy essentially takes a hard SF world, which he has built carefully over four novels, and pushes his science to such an extreme that he builds a fantasy world out of it. "Any sufficiently advanced science" indeed.
And McCarthy takes great pleasure in this: a solid half of the novel is spent taking naive observers through the ruins of the Queendom of Sol, as they witness technology so advanced they take their creators for gods. It's incredibly amusing, then, when said gods are self-effacing Conrad Mursk and withdrawn ex-King Bruno. There are many scenes in To Crush the Moon that seem to exist mostly to poke fun at fantasy conventions, as Bruno and Conrad seem to be winking in aparté at the reader over how other men marvel at the "magic" they witness.
That's very interesting for a while, but it's unfortunate that McCarthy doesn't really take the concept for a spin. The rest of the novel plays out as a traditional fantasy novel with plausible SF explanations, but with all the trappings of the genre. The main characters actually spend a long time just Travelling All Over The Map And Marvelling At The World, which gets tedious here as it does in any fantasy novel.
Ultimately, the end of the novel, and thus of the Queendom of Sol series, is bittersweet, and somewhat underwhelming. I wish more time had been spent on the fates of Bascal, Xmary and Tamra, instead of spoofing a fantasy quest. Alas, fans of King Bascal, such as myself, will have to go back to Lost in Transmission to enjoy him again.
All in all, To Crush the Moon is an excellent, witty hard SF novel; I just wish it wasn't the conclusion to such a beloved series of mine.
September 25, 2013
This book answered questions the first two books in the trilogy raised in their first and last chapters.
I was totally hooked by this book and could not put it down. The ending reminded me a little of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, but that may have been me. Mind you I was also slightly disappointed with it. A little bit of a cop out in some ways and in others a big build up that left me wondering is that it? Oh...
Having said all that I want more, I will try to find more Wil McCarthy.
I was totally hooked by this book and could not put it down. The ending reminded me a little of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, but that may have been me. Mind you I was also slightly disappointed with it. A little bit of a cop out in some ways and in others a big build up that left me wondering is that it? Oh...
Having said all that I want more, I will try to find more Wil McCarthy.
March 3, 2012
The author's creative imagination appears to exceed his skills as a storyteller and writer. This story line is inconsistent in all of his books. In addition, he has a penchant for introducing details that are not, later, tied into the story line. I regard these as "loose ends," and there are way too many of them in McCarthy's books.
Read
April 5, 2016Been trying to find another copy of this to reread it. Fantastic sci fi setting, very human characters. Discussed some of the psuedo science with my physics professor and he said it was pretty in line with physics (this was several years ago).
Either way, a fun read.
Either way, a fun read.
July 21, 2007
Interesting concept, compact the moon so its surface gravity is high enough to hold an atmosphere and let people live on its surface. If only it were that simple...
February 6, 2014
Good conclusion to the series, and the idea to crush the moon was interesting. Over time, I remember that this was a nice conclusion after the other books, but specifics don't stand out.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews